Chapter 14

"What?" Kim repeated for about the fourth time after her father had finished elucidating what had happened earlier at the beach. He, however, hadn't said a word about how that correlated with Renee's being upset.

He sighed, watching Kim hide her head in her hands and take a rather deep breath before looking up at her father again. "You know… It isn't your fault. It might have happened to me or Stephen as well. Maybe I'm just lucky that it was you, who could run after him." Jack quirked an eyebrow. This wasn't really the reaction he would have expected from Kim. "But, we're talking about my daughter here. Your granddaughter. I can't even imagine what…" That's when tears rolled over her cheeks, and her throat was so sore that she couldn't speak anymore. Crying was more what Jack had expected, but that didn't mean he disliked it any less.

He remained quiet, while looking at Kim. She regained fairly fast, before looking up at her father seriously. "What happened?"

Even though the question was abstract, Jack immediately understood what she meant and took a breath before replying. "The felon wasn't unknown to the rescuers. He's a…" Jack didn't quite know if he should share this piece of information, but was sure that she would ask him until she knew everything either way. "He's a registered child offender." He fought back the word 'molester'. Kim gasped, as he could have guessed, new tears springing into her eyes. "He was released last week. The rescuers were tipped that he would most likely fall back into old patterns and look for new victims in the same places as before he was caught. He did, indeed. They called the police. They took our testimonies and details and promised that would be enough to put him behind bars for life."

"Why didn't they before?"

"I don't know, Kim."

She nodded, wiping at her eyes to clear the evidence that she had cried. She looked at her father questioningly again. She somehow felt that this had something to do with the fact she had heard Renee cry upstairs, and she wanted to know if she was right. "You feared that they had followed and found you, didn't you?" She whispered.

Jack understood whom she meant with 'they'. He nodded.

"And you told Renee?"

He nodded again, looking down at his toes sighing.

"Great."

Yeah, he had told her, and that had not been that good of an idea. He really wished that he hadn't, had he known how it would affect her. Deep inside, he had already known maybe, but whenever things went bad, he trusted on his instinct as a CTU. And the CTU in him would see conspiracies behind everything. That would most likely never change, not in the least because in the last few years there had been nothing but conspiracies and forays. Nothing or no one had looked as they seemed. Everything had been so much more difficult and connected as had appeared to be on first sight. No one had been able to trust. After having lived like that, it was particularly hard to let go of it.

First, he felt quite proud of Renee, for being able to effectively put it aside, while he couldn't. Immediately after that, however, he felt mad at her, for being so foolish not to see the dangers anymore. Then he felt mad at himself, for not being able to let go of the CTU in him, and for not giving Renee the unconcerned life she had longed for and had been promised by Jack Bauer himself. Maybe he was foolish to make that promise to her, while aware how hard it would be for him to go through life as unconcerned himself? Or maybe it was just foolish to not be able to do it?

"Dad?" Kim questioned.

"Yeah?"

"You are way more thoughtful than I have seen you in years."

And how right she was on that. He didn't reply her in any way.

"Listen, Dad," she began, "I can't come in between Renee and you, so I won't… but if Chloe ensured you that you would be safe, then I trust her on that. After what you have told me, Renee's been through quite a lot. I think she deserves to be unconcerned and happy. And so do you as well."

"I can't," he said through clenched teeth, more to himself than anyone else.

"You can. She loves you. And if you love her back, then try a bit harder."